


A Man's Measure: The Chess Master's Queen

by sharehenstar



Series: A Man's Measure [8]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And Acts Like the Adorable Prat That He Is, Arthur Knows About Merlin's Magic, Artistic Liberties Taken with a Minor Character from Arthurian Legend, Awesome Gwen (Merlin), Court Sorcerer Merlin, Epic Bromance, F/M, Firsts, Gwen's POV, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Post-Magic Reveal, Pre-Slash, Protective Arthur, Protective Merlin, Two Idiots Who Won't Admit Their Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-25 02:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2605049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharehenstar/pseuds/sharehenstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captured and held prisoner, Gwen and Arthur can only await rescue by one seriously pissed off Court Warlock. (EDIT: Epilogue now added!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Chess Master's Queen

**Author's Note:**

> As some of you might have noticed (cough), this takes place long after (in my universe) Merlin's magic is revealed to Arthur. I don't tell you how, or when, but hopefully this reassures some of you who were worried I might end this series like the BBC one. Never fear! Too many adventures await our boys (and their cast of friends). I will put this in its proper order once I have other fics to add; for the moment, please enjoy! I may also add an epilogue that ties up (some of) the loose ends you might find here.

**The Chess Master's Queen**

Gwen had lost count of the days since she and Arthur had been taken captive, manhandled down into bedrock and earth. No light except torchlight, and little else aside from stale air and smoke-scented breezes could reach them down here.

Not that she knew exactly where “here” was, as when they had tumbled into their cell, coarse cloth sacks shoved over their heads and wrists tied with ferocious knots and little care, neither she nor Arthur could track the path they had taken.

Only after what seemed like hours had they finally been released from their bonds, by the potbellied man who sat at the rough-hewn table in the middle of the dungeon now. His brown eyes glittered like a predator’s as he watched Arthur’s struggles with the rope that bound him to an equally rough-hewn chair, “I apologize if my accommodations are not to your liking, infant Highness,” Lord Domas remarked, stroking the beard covering his chin in would-be sympathy.

Such scenes had played out often over…however many days they had been here. But no one (save one other) knew better how stubborn Arthur could be than Gwen, particularly when his kingdom was the prize in question.

Or his Court Warlock, whom Lord Domas seemed particularly keen on having Arthur sign over into his service.

“They’re delightful, I am sure,” Arthur spat out, ignoring the blood dribbling down his cracked lips from their lack of adequate water.

(More so for Arthur, who had all but ordered Gwen to drink his ration, as well.)

“Arthur, Arthur, Arthur,” Lord Domas tutted, in what was meant to pass as fatherly concern, but only came across as condescension. Gwen saw Arthur grit his teeth at the Lord’s assumed familiarity, “Have our little sessions taught you nothing? It is not only your life at stake. Not that I understand why a simple _maid_ should be of any importance to you; she _is_ a pretty one, I’ll grant you.”

He leered at Gwen, who bristled under the look, the free spirit that had been nurtured under Morgana, and then Arthur’s attentions, raging at the treatment she had received at his hands thus far.

A half-snarl, half-hiss drew Lord Domas’s attention back to his other prisoner, “You will leave her out of this.”

Lord Domas smirked, “Ah, a forbidden romance, is it? Charming, I am sure. Did your father know about this?”

Despite herself, Gwen stiffened, searching out Arthur’s face.

They had been a forbidden romance, once. She had since come to terms with the fact that she had hurt Arthur too badly to pursue it any further. Arthur himself had acknowledged that he, too, had hurt her, by forcing Gwen to choose between he and Lancelot (shade though Lancelot was at that time).

First and foremost, though, they had been friends. Dear friends, and she thought them far better suited for that type of relationship than they had ever been as a couple.

She just could not be sure that Arthur shared the sentiment.

Perhaps he knew what she had been thinking, for he tilted his head to the side and nodded imperceptibly to her, an equally imperceptible smile chasing its way across his lips.

As if some invisible weight had lifted between them, Gwen smiled beatifically, and nodded back.

That did not change the fact, of course, that Arthur remained horribly chivalrous, especially towards the woman he saw as the sister Morgana should have become.

And Lord Domas, on some level, knew that. He had not harmed her—much—simply had his guards rough her up a bit (and that was _more_ than enough of an offense, by Arthur’s count); Arthur had suffered far worse than she, coming back from these “sessions” with bruises and cuts, while minor, that could nonetheless be dangerous were they to become infected.

Gwen had done her best to help him, but this was the first such session where they had been separated, and while the lack of guards caused her pause, it did nothing whatsoever to reassure her.

"Are you familiar with the game of chess, infant Highness?" Lord Domas's silky purr curled through the air between he and Arthur, even as his fingers curled white-knuckled around the pommel of his sword.

Gwen could have sworn Arthur was channeling Merlin in that moment, full of careless tact as he turned back towards their captor and rolled his eyes, "I _am_ a capable king, Domas, much as certain manservants may claim otherwise."

Gwen nearly grinned then, biting back a giggle as Arthur's voice rose slightly at the end, covering the sudden sounds of grunts and clatters now barely reaching them from outside the thickness of the dungeon’s walls.

There could only be one, extraordinarily powerful, and (most likely) extraordinarily furious, reason why Arthur had tacked that sally on to the end.  Not that said reason was exactly a _manservant_ any longer...

Lord Domas’s pocked brow scrunched in confusion.  Gwen really _did_ have to bite back a grin then—apparently, Lord Domas's sources (and therefore, Lord Domas himself) were ill-informed about Camelot's king and his true nature.  Therefore leading said Lord to make the fatal assumption that Arthur was just like any other person of noble blood.

A mistake that would, far sooner than the older Lord realized, lead to his death.

Clearly dismissing the incongruence of Arthur's statement, Lord Domas responded easily, "If it is as you say, infant Highness, then surely you must know I have you in checkmate?"

Something hard and flinty entered Arthur's eyes as he smiled, "Is that what you believe, Domas?"

Said Lord bit back a snort, not once loosening the grip he had on his sword’s hilt, “Yes, it is what I believe, how can it not be? Your walls and castles have fallen; your knights are not here or, if they are, will not find us. How else do you imagine it could be done, _Sire_?”

The sounds outside their prison grew louder, close enough now that Gwen could just make out a familiar voice crying words in an _un_ familiar tongue.

Inevitably, most of them were followed by booms. Or clatters. Or cries.

Lord Domas seemed to ignore it, locked in a contest of wills with Arthur.

When a particularly loud thump abruptly sounded outside the dungeon and Lord Domas, despite himself, glanced thin-lipped at the barricaded entryway, Arthur smirked, "I am afraid you forgot to capture my queen."

The door could not have chosen a better moment to explode off its hinges.

Lord Domas's enraged shout cut short as the heavy, solid piece of oak collided with him at a truly frightening speed and sent him careening into the flagstone wall across the room with a sickening crunch.

" _Mer_ lin!" Arthur's exclamation was equal parts exasperation, gratitude, and relief as he rocked back in his chair, narrowly avoiding a singeing by the selfsame stream of blue fire that had buried Lord Domas under a pile of smoldering wooden splinters.

Sure enough, their beloved Court Warlock stood in the now-empty doorframe, haloed by wisps of dust and—thank heavens—streams of sunlight.

He also had blue whips of sheer, undiluted power literally crackling around him; even Gwen, who had loved and known Merlin for eight or nine years now, could not prevent a small part of herself from quailing at the not-so-unconscious display of pure power.

Certainly Leon, who had arrived in Merlin's wake, gave said warlock a wide berth as he edged around him through what was little more than a field of rubble and a hole in the wall.

“Are you all right, Your Majesty?”

Even as he asked, Leon’s eyes darted to Gwen, absorbing her scruffy, but hale appearance. She smiled warmly at Camelot’s head knight.

Arthur must have noticed, because he shook his head with a faint grin and inclined it towards Gwen as said head knight moved to untie him, “See to her, Leon. I will be fine—Merlin can assess the damage from here.”

Leon’s eyes snapped down so fast to his liege that Gwen stifled a (rather hysterical) giggle, “Sire, are you sure? Merlin is…ah…rather preoccupied at the moment.”

Gwen saw what he meant. _Never_ had she dreamed there would come a day when Merlin _truly_ frightened her, but the thunderous glare he wore, coupled with the whirling gold that permeated the blue of his irises as he all but snarled at Lord Domas’s unmoving figure…it made her almost deliriously thankful she had not witnessed his wrath until now.

Not that she particularly _wanted_ to witness it, really. This Merlin was so far removed from _her_ Merlin that she barely recognized him, and did not know what he could do were he so inclined.

Arthur, of course, had never been cowed by danger, and it was no different now. Rolling his eyes again, with an audacity that made Gwen want to gape and smack him over the head at the same time, Camelot’s king drawled, “ _Really_ , _Mer_ lin? You couldn’t have done something a little more creative, could you? Like turn him into a rat and feed him to the stables’ cats?”

At that moment, Gwen could not decide what scared her more: the fact that licks of blue flame were _literally_ pouring off of Merlin…or the fact that, as soon as Arthur spoke, they extinguished as if they were little more than a candle wick’s flame.

“Arthur,” the breathed name fell unbidden from their precious friend’s lips, and _within_ a breath, said Court Warlock had all but flown across the dungeon’s earthen floor, power shrinking down within him until he was simply Merlin again, and a panicking one at that.

“You great buffoon,” Arthur’s voice was laden with deep affection, and Gwen could have _sworn_ that she saw even her king’s shoulders relax at the return to semi-normalcy, “you really overdid it this time, didn’t you?”

Sharp irritation swiftly replaced the panic in Merlin’s familiarly-blue-again eyes. Gwen thought she might have been the only one to notice it hadn’t vanished completely, and took that as an additional reassurance, especially when Merlin bent close to Arthur and began to untie him, an even sharper retort on his lips, “So nice to see you again, too, _Your Highness_ ,” sarcasm at its best. Even irritated, however, Merlin could not hide the depth of his affection or relief. A tiny smile flitted across his lips as he successfully released Arthur from his bindings and murmured, close to their king’s ear, “Bloody prat, would it kill you to say _thank you_ , once in a while? After all I’ve done for you--”

He did not complete the familiar rant, as one of Arthur’s newly-freed hands immediately sought out the back of his head and tangled in the black strands it found there. “Thank you,” the perfectly serious and straight-faced response had Merlin battling back the color rising in his cheeks and Gwen smiling tiredly at Leon as the head knight finally released her from the cell.

“How unbearable was he on the way here?” she knew perfectly well her two (other) oblivious boys could hear her, and did not feel the need to censure her question in deference to one or the other after today’s events.

Leon seemed to understand what she intended (as he had quite a few times, recently), and allowed the tiniest of smirks to flit across his own lips, “Utterly and completely, my Lady.”

“ _Leon_!” Merlin’s indignant squawk had Gwen striving to suppress a sudden bout of laughter.

When she stepped out of the cell and happened to glance up, it was to find a pink-cheeked Merlin gingerly helping Arthur to his feet. An Arthur, while too exhausted and sore to laugh, nonetheless strong enough to smirk amusedly at his beloved (former) manservant’s indignation.

Gwen rather though he should not have expected to be immune to her (their) teasing, either.

“Should you be laughing, Arthur? I seem to recall a certain king who absolutely refused to bow to Domas’s demands that he hand over his queen—and, as everyone surely knows by now, Sire, that queen is not I.”

It took a few seconds for what she had said to register. When it did, the reactions she received were truly priceless:

Merlin’s face cycled through several colors all at once—pale shock, white realization, then the deep, crimson red of embarrassment and (Gwen suspected) something else, something years in the making that probably had not been helped by this latest bout with destiny (or, rather, surely had been).

Arthur’s nearly matched, finally settling into the vivid, flushed red of his counterpart, “We were talking about chess!” he exclaimed, rather desperately, little of him the arrogant prat she remembered and most of him a man absolutely unable to live without his dearest friend.

“All the more fitting,” Leon remarked absently as he helped Gwen wrap herself in his cloak.

That led to much blanching on said ‘Queen’ and King’s part, finally rousing Leon’s interest enough that he glanced up.

It took the head knight a moment to catch up with the conversation, now that he had been assured of Gwen’s safety and relative health. Once he did, however, the normally reserved man actually grinned, and leaned close to Gwen’s ear to bestow upon it in a confiding whisper, “You know, my Lady, the Knights have taken to calling him ‘Lady Hawk’ in our tactical maneuvers. ‘Queen’ may actually be more fitting, don’t you agree?”

Gwen had to bury her sudden laughter in Leon’s warm shoulder. In the background, she heard Merlin abruptly come back to life.

“ _Queen_?” her best friend sputtered. She thought he might have whirled on Arthur, “Really, Arthur? _Queen_?”

“It _was_ only chess, _Mer_ lin, truly!”

As Gwen drifted off to the sounds of her two dearest friends’ bickering, it occurred to her that Merlin hadn’t _actually_ objected to the Knights calling him ‘Queen.’

 

_ End The Chess Master’s Queen _


	2. Epilogue: The Chess Master's Queen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Arthur and Merlin are each as stubborn as the other, and Gwen finds herself faced with running damage control...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here is the epilogue for The Chess Master’s Queen. I am stunned (and incredibly appreciative!) of how well this particular installment of A Man’s Measure was welcomed. I am so glad you have enjoyed it—it has been one of my favorite pieces to write!

**Epilogue: The Chess Master’s Queen**

“Arthur?”

Camelot’s young king cracked his eyes open, squinting in the firelight as the shape of Gwen’s face resolved itself above him.

“Gwen,” he acknowledged quietly, in deference to his sleeping knights. “How are you?”

Gwen smiled, more at ease than she had been in six days.

(Soon after their rescue, Leon had informed them of the length of time Lord Domas had held them captive. Merlin, even hours later, still could not speak of their captivity without literally emitting sparks, and Gwen had no desire to witness her poor friend’s composure crack even more once he processed--truly processed--that the reason she and Arthur had been taken at all was due to Lord Domas’s obsession with said warlock.)

“I'm fine, Arthur. Certainly, much better than you are,” she gently prodded him in the side, utterly unsurprised by the pained hiss she received in response. “Just how many times were you _hit_ in those sessions, Arthur?” she demanded, worried. “I _know_ you’ve avoided treatment until now.”

Arthur tried to shimmy away, clamping his arms carefully around his wounded ribs, “You and the knights needed the treatment more.”

“Arthur, you’re the _king_! Exactly how well do you expect your army to function without you?” a firm grip around his arm accompanied Gwen’s exclamation as she gingerly peeled it away from its protective clench. She frowned at the purple bruises decorating his wrist where the ropes had crushed against his skin.

“Merlin seemed to muster them just fine,” he muttered, trying (and failing) to dodge her other hand.

Gwen frowned fiercely at him and opened her mouth to scold…when a warmly callused, rather larger hand abruptly stilled him by (none too lightly) grabbing her own.

Both she and Arthur (whose wrist that hand still held) started, immediately turning to face a darkly scowling Court Warlock, “‘Merlin’ would have preferred not to have had to muster them at all,” the younger man retorted peevishly, holding his hand out for the cloth Gwen held.

Gwen bit back a grin as she handed it to him, noting as she did the alarm that flashed briefly through the blue of Arthur’s eyes, before the ridiculously noble prat masked it with false bravado, “ _Queenie_!” he exclaimed, would-be brightly, attempting to muster his usual impertinent grin. “How do you like your new tactical name?”

Merlin’s promptly dropped wet cloth elicited a muffled sputter as it collided (not-quite-accidentally) with Arthur’s face. The warlock smirked, “So sorry, Your Highness. What was that again?”

More sputters: “ _Mer_ lin!” an indignant (if stifled) shout as Arthur reached up and yanked the cloth off his face.

Merlin simply raised an eyebrow at the irritated blue eyes glittering at him, calmly retrieving the cloth as if he _had_ only dropped it, “I can put up with ‘Queen’ if I have to, Arthur. But ‘Queen _ie_ ’ is a bit much, don’t you think?”

Smothering a laugh, Gwen reached for the bowl of herb-laden water she had brought with her, feeling her expression warm when he, almost immediately thereafter, set to work cleaning their king’s split lips.

Grabbing a second cloth and squeezing the excess warm water out of it, she turned her attention to the wrist she still held and the rope burn resting against her palm, listening quietly to the conversation that passed between her two friends as she treated it:

“We’re going to have to wrap your ribs, Arthur.”

Apparently, any pretense of levity Arthur had tried to put up failed spectacularly, as far as it concerned Merlin, anyway. She saw his expression soften (as it always had in the presence of a certain upset Court Warlock) as he murmured, “Very well. I will be unable to do much training with the knights, in any case; we need to clean up the lower town and fix the keep. How bad was the damage, Merlin?”

Gwen spied an additional laceration along the side of Arthur’s neck, and quickly moved to treat that as well, lest Merlin spot it…and how close it had been to a rather vital vein. Said king seemed to follow her line of thinking, for she saw his jaw clench a bit as he held back a nearly inaudible hiss.

Merlin, luckily, seemed not to hear it, shaking his head and moving on from Arthur’s lips to the series of shallow cuts littered across his arm. Carefully, Gwen pushed the bowl so that it sat between the two of them (and did not slosh), “I don’t know the exact figures, Arthur. I left Gaius and Galahad in charge once it became apparent that we needed to get to you two.”

Arthur grit his teeth, holding back another hiss as Merlin rinsed his cloth (with a painfully grateful glance at Gwen) and started cleaning the dirt from his injuries, “Our people?”

Merlin’s hands stilled, and he stared blankly down at the cloth he’d pressed against Arthur’s wrist, not answering.

When Gwen glanced up to assess why, she abruptly realized he’d stumbled across the rope burn that matched the one she had just treated. Only this particular loop of rope had cut so deeply into Arthur’s wrist that it had actually broken the skin.

Firelight caught on a single sparkle that fell from Merlin’s eye to land on Arthur’s wrist. The older man’s eyes widened, “ _Merlin_.”

Merlin shook his head fiercely, dropping his hands (and their cloth) to clench tightly in his lap, “Don’t you _dare_ say you aren’t worth it, you prat!” His voice cracked.

Before Gwen could either process or object to the sudden movement, Arthur surged forward and wrapped his arms tightly around Merlin’s neck, burying his grimace against the jet black strands of hair as Merlin stiffened.

“Arthur…” she tried.

It was Arthur’s turn to shake his head fiercely, “Gwen, _please_.”

She fell silent, startled by the dark, haunted wells of midnight that met her own.

Sighing quietly and nodding, Gwen was not quite able to conceal the tender smile that flitted across her lips at the upwelling of gratitude that immediately lightened the blue of Arthur’s eyes.

Her smile grew (and gentled) as she watched the remaining tension in Merlin’s body bleed off into barely contained quivers as Arthur lightly rubbed his shoulders and arms.

Which was apparently her cue to carefully set down the cloth she held in the bowl and silently climb to her feet, as any awareness Arthur might have had of her swiftly disappeared, consumed as he was by comforting Merlin.

She could have sworn she saw him tuck a discreet kiss behind Merlin’s ear as she moved to join Leon by the fire.

 

_ End Epilogue of The Chess Master’s Queen _


End file.
